For quite some time it’s been clear that Fox News host Sean Hannity was knee deep in the Trump-Cohen scandal. It was revealed in court that Donald Trump’s attorney Michael Cohen was also acting as legal counsel for Hannity, which Hannity kept secret even as he was using his television show to try to minimize Trump’s scandals. Now a series of text messages have dragged Hannity way deeper into this the Trump-Cohen mess, and may have put him on the hook for legal liability in the process.

Stormy Daniels and her attorney Michael Avenatti have filed a new lawsuit alleging that her former attorney Keith Davidson was secretly plotting with Michael Cohen and against her. The suit is based partly on text messages between Davidson and Cohen, in which they plotted to get Daniels to go on the Sean Hannity show during the election and deny her affair with Donald Trump.

Cohen was violating federal election law, and probably worse, by paying Daniels to keep quiet during the election about her affair with Trump. This lawsuit alleges that Davidson was conspiring with Cohen on this matter. Clearly one or both of them was communicating with Sean Hannity about having Daniels on his show. So the question becomes whether Hannity was aware that he was participating in an illegal conspiracy. At the least, Hannity will be hauled in as a witness, both in this lawsuit, and in the criminal case that will eventually be brought against Cohen. At worst, Hannity could now be facing criminal charges himself.

Fox News has always gone out of its way to dishonestly protect Donald Trump, but Sean Hannity’s efforts to protect Trump have been wildly over the top even by Fox standards. These new revelations help explain why Hannity has been so desperate to deflect from Trump’s scandals: he’s been knee deep in those scandals all along.